UBC brings dentists to inner city school
Initiative allows students to go directly from classroom to the dentist’s chair
A pair of little feet in high- top runners fidget far from the bottom of the sleek dentist’s chair as eight- year- old Denika Kumar gets a filling.
The only thing unusual about this picture is that Denika and the dental team working on her teeth are in the basement of Florence Nightingale elementary school near Kingsway and 12th Avenue on Vancouver’s east side.
The weekly dental clinic, funded and staffed through the University of B. C.’ s Faculty of Dentistry, means children can come directly from class to their appointment, freeing parents from the cost and inconvenience of missing work to take them.
“We eliminated the biggest barrier to treatment, which is transportation and parents having to take time off work,” explained Dr. Debbie Fonseca, a clinical instructor at UBC who supervises the newly minted dentists doing the work. “By improving oral health, we’re also improving overall health.”
The program launched in 2011 and is expanding to bring in other students from east side schools on a bus called the Tooth Trolley.
All 250 students at Nightingale school have been examined by a dentist in postgraduate training at UBC and those who needed fillings or caps have received them.
Most families can’t afford regular dental care because they don’t have a dental plan through their jobs or because they need more extensive work than what’s covered by social assistance.
That’s the situation for Lynell Hrycenko , Denika’s mother, who said she’s been turned away from having her own teeth fixed because it required extra charges that she couldn’t pay.
“They made me feel like being on assistance is lower than everybody else,” explained the young mother as she waited for her daughter.
“I think this is a great program if you don’t have a dentist.”
The aims of the UBC program are loftier than patching up some bad teeth, according to Dr. Christopher Zed, assistant dean of dentistry. The ultimate aim is to find funding and volunteers to run the program full time, offering improved service to the families of students at inner city schools. This would help get the message to adults about how a poor diet can lead to decay and inflammation in the mouth, not to mention other serious health problems such as diabetes and obesity.
“We’d like to bring the mother in for a quick assessment and have some education time to say, ‘ Johnny is drinking Coca- Cola all the time and eating Oh Henry! bars for a snack, can we suggest an alternative?”
A growing body of research suggests that inflammation in the mouth — through decayed teeth or gum disease — has a greater effect on overall health than previously thought. So getting children and parents to think about caring for their mouths early could have a big disease prevention payoff down the line. It’s a complex problem affected by everything from poverty and illness to family structure and cultural beliefs, says Zed.
“The uniqueness of this program is the idea of changing attitudes and behaviour by looking at some of those social determinants of health.”
To that end, reading material about healthy living is translated into a number of languages including Vietnamese, Spanish, Chinese, Tagalog and Punjabi.
The Faculty of Dentistry is monitoring the Nightingale program by following kids from grades 1 through 7 and will have final results in five years.
It costs between $ 40,000 and $ 50,000 a year to run, most of which is covered through donations and volunteer time. More of both would be needed to increase the number of hours it operates, said Zed.
“Sponsoring a full- time resident would be a terrific way to drive the program forward so we have more contact hours in building.”
Families interested in using the Tooth Trolley or the dental services at Florence Nightingale school should contact the community liaison worker at their own school to get the process rolling, Fonseca said. Students from other east side schools who will use the Tooth Trolley have already been selected, but more kids will be brought in as the program continues.